What is an Ijaza?

If you follow me on social media or read my last post, you might have heard me talk about a calligraphy ijaza before. I want to tell you a little more about what it is.

Ijaza literally means permission, and in traditional Islamic calligraphy it is a certification granted to a student from their master, upon completion of a specific writing curriculum. The master was once a student who earned an ijaza from their master, so it is in fact a long chain of master-student relationships that goes back hundreds of years.

In the picture you’ll see lines of lessons for the Thuluth and Naskh scripts. The writing curriculum is composed of different lines of text, which the student practices and submits to their teacher for assessment, typically on a weekly basis. The homework has to be written according to certain proportions, and only once the student has learned the line properly can they move on to the next line. It may take several months to perfect a line, so completing the full curriculum can take several years on average.

In the Ottoman tradition, the first line that students are typically taught to write is a short prayer: “Rabbi yassir, wa la tu’assir, rabbi tammim bil khair.” It translates to “My Lord, make it easy, and don’t make it difficult; My Lord make it end with good.” Once a student has written this properly, they move on to writing lines of independent letters. The next series of lines are alphabetical pairs of letters, and then students move on to write out words, sentences, and other assigned compositions.

When the master feels the student is ready, the student writes out a text that will be used for their ijaza certification. The master will sign it, and now the real journey begins. This ijaza grants the student permission to create their own compositions, to sign their work as the student of their master, and to take on their own students to carry on this time-honoured tradition.